"Step Up 2 the Streets" is the follow-up to the
smash hit "Step Up," which ignited theaters in August
2006. When rebellious street dancer Andie (Briana Evigan)
lands at the elite Maryland School of the Arts, she finds
herself fighting to fit in while also trying to hold onto
her old life. When she joins forces with the school's hottest
dancer Chase (Robert Hoffman) to form a crew of classmate
outcasts to compete in Baltimore's underground dance battle
The Streets, she ultimately finds a way to live her dream
while building a bridge between her two separate worlds. Movie
Review:

I know - if I had been really conscious about keeping fit,
I would have gotten a great bod by now. All I needed to do
was to pick up street dancing, and I wouldn’t be stuffing
popcorn into my face while gawking at the dancers’ precise
dance moves and perfectly toned bods during the preview of
this movie. And no, the reason why this movie seems mediocre
to me isn’t because of my hateful personality. It is
because of its bland execution that makes it seem like an
overlong music video showcasing cool dance moves.

After
the first movie made a box office splash in 2006, the studios
couldn’t resist making a sequel to milk more money out
of today’s MTV generation who loves everything loud
and flashy. The first movie’s director and main stars
do not return in this sequel, neither is the plot a continual
story to the first movie. The 98-minute movie sees a girl
entering a prestigious dance school and realizing that there
is tension between her dreams of being a street dancer and
the traditional classical dances which the school is teaching.
Throw in a few outcaste friends, a few good looking studs
and a few magnificently-choreographed dance battles, and you’d
have the younger viewers asking for more after the end credits
begin rolling.

While
I’m in no position to tell you about the street culture,
the movie feels like an excuse to bring together some of the
best looking dancers on screen to showcase their chops. And
they do it really well too, judging from the cheers and applauses
of approval from the invited guests (who are experts in this
dance genre) during the preview screening. While I know the
focus of this movie shouldn’t be about the plot, the
movie still feels like an excuse for director Jon Chu to show
audiences how predictably second-rate the script is.

Some
of the characters did make me laugh though, for example, the
geek who breaks into the coolest dance moves on a staircase,
and the Asian girl who gets laughed at for her command of
the English language. But this racial and character representation
is so conventionally banal; you’d expect it to be a
high school TV drama. With a bigger budget, the filmmakers
can also throw in more sequences of breathtaking dance competitions,
more impressive craning camera shots, and a grand finale involving
lights, rain and lots of extras.

Unknown
stars Briana Evigan, Robert Hoffman and Will Kemp headline
this movie with their likeable but bland personalities, but
I’d suppose viewers would not actually care, because
they are there to gape at their cool dance moves after all.
Blame me and my self-righteousness if you have to, but this
movie isn’t really my cup of tea. I enjoy other forms
of guilty pleasures, but at the expense of realizing how pathetically
unfit and untalented I am, I’d prefer to diss this too-cool-to-be-true
dance movie in the meantime. You may want to check back again
after I pick up street dancing – once I finish the bag
of chips on my laps.

Movie
Rating:

(An
excuse for the good looking cast to be cool and showcase their
street dancing)